In its short history, Internet usage has been mainly driven by portals and search engines, such as Yahoo! and Google. Recently, the rapid growth of social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, has revealed a new trend of Internet usage. Social networking generally relates to services and tools that help users maintain and expand their circles of friends usually by exploiting existing relationships. Social networking sites have shown potential to become the places on the Internet where many people spend most of their time, thus making these sites the main entry point for online activity. Often times, these social networking sites can become the focal point of sharing information, such as links, multimedia, music, and the like.
In general, Internet services, such as social networking, offer a mix of features and tools, including as message boards, games, journals, web logs (“blogs”), and instant messaging. Instant messaging refers to a form of real-time communication between two or more people based on typed text. Typically users identify themselves to an Internet service by providing login information, such as a username or and a password. This can very often be cumbersome because a user must first direct a browser to the Internet service's login page, and then provide the login information. Thus, it may be desirable to provide a simpler method and system for logging onto an Internet service.
In addition, user's often must manage multiple accounts and login information. For example, many users may manage ten or more accounts for email, instant messaging, etc. Therefore, it may be desirable to provide a method and system for logging onto an Internet service that minimizes the number of accounts a user must manage.